Why cant we all have this (housing)

the other day i went to a new shard and a good friend of mine who i play with dailly in game piped up in TS and asked if i had a place to park my characters on that shard.
which i of course said no.
he offered to let them crash at his house on that shard.

and that kinda suprised me.
cause i thought i knew of all of his houses for all of his accounts.
and besides that, id never heard of him playing on that shard.

so i asked him about it.
he informed me that one of his old accounts has 3 houses on it, grandfathered back from the day.
(and i remember those days, cause i use to have 5 houses on my primrary account, all side by side in a row, it was sweet!)

at any rate, i asked him what he had on the account, just cause i was curious.

so he told me had has a castle on our primary shard.
then a cabin on another shard, and a small mini tower on a 3rd shard.

and i thought to myself...... THAT is that i want, damnit!
that is EXACTLLY what i want.
i want to keep my castle on sonoma.
and i LOVE cruising around to other shards and playing.
but i have no houses there.
i would give..... well hell, id give MONEY to have that.

and why couldnt we?
cap it.
make it so you can have 2 other houses.
hell, 5 other houses, all have to be on other shards.
and all have to be small footprints.
like small.
as in thatched roof house.
7x7 kinda thing.

that would be the cats ass right there i tell ya.

THAT should be something that a person could buy on the EA codes store.
hell, id pay $100 for that.
PER ACCOUNT.

or you know what.
lets make it even smaller then a 7x7
lets bring back tents damnit!

i love tents.
i loved them from the first one i placed in '97 at yew.
thats what we should have.
tents.

We're not going to get 2+ houses per account even if it's on different shards. But, there's no logical reason to not give us one per account. I even remember an e-mail poll a few years ago asking if I (we) would be willing to pay (forget how it was worded i.e., one time, monthly, etc) for an extra house per account. I answered YES. Naturally nothing has come of it. Not even acknowledgement by any EA people that I recall.

That, my friend, is the biggest problem. Think of all the pixel crack we would hoard. I have a chest that is FULL (125) of old items… you know what I mean the stuff with charges. Cloaks with Night Sight, masks with cunning, etc. When these items were made they never intended them to be saved for this long. Why do I save them? Because I can’t bring myself to throw them out. This game is a game for pack rats! I like to organize my stuff but when I look in chests at IDOC’s I wonder “how did this person ever find what they were looking for?” With SA around the corner I’m stocking up on mediocre weapons and armor to smelt for resources. So that’s a lot of items just sitting in a chest. Now the other side to this is that memory is a LOT cheaper now than in 1997. They can cheaply store a lot more than they were able to before.

I wish, more than a new house, that we could put a lot more in our bank box. How many times have you been in a hurry and rushed to the bank to drop off some items only to find your box is full. Then you make a quick decision on what to throw onto the bank floor.

Stratics Veteran

Ah the days of 1 house per shard per acct. (which came after 1 house per character which came after as many houses as you could secure keys for).

Sometimes I wish we had it back just to be able to move my storage house outside Skara to the empty land next to my cabin near Minoc (since I spend the most time at the cabin) without condemning a small tower on Chessie used by a friend of mine.

Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

You get 18 houseing squares per account. They can be split into any amount of houses 7x or larger.

In addition you get 1 square for each year of the account. This would give those with 11 yr old accounts 1 18x18 and 1 11x11. Any combonation of 29 with a minimum of 7 and a max of 18 with no shard restrictions.

ahh, a simple sollution to that problem...
just have the 'extra' house's tied to the main house as far as lockdowns and secures, thus not giving any additional storage capability for that account, just to be 'spread out' more on other shards ( only).
so say your house on primary shard ( which would need to be set) has say 24,000 secures.. that would be shared by the 'houses' on other shards.( i would suggest also a minumume amount that must be left on the 'home' shard).
this should not effect grandfathered housing as far as those accounts that are lucky enough to have more than one house per there account from the old day's or special event's.

Stratics Veteran

Put this ideal out before. One time upgrade at cost. Adds a basement level to your house with locks reflecting the accounts age. Hell even a Oxen cart that works like a boat on land. But takes up like 3 pet slots.

Stratics Veteran

If you arent planning on living on multiple shards, then a bank and inn are a fine combination. If you have two accounts it is easy to make 7 characters on each acct on the shard you "cruise" sometimes and give yourself plenty of storage space there.

One house per account is fine. What needs changed is item limit restrictions. Quite a few people just want big houses for the storage. What if a new house type called "warehouse" was created. This house type would allow for unlimited storage, but would be a plain looking building about the size of a villa. It could not be customized nor used for merchants. For item counts over a castle's, a rent fee would be incurred every month.

This would allow the pack rats to have what they want and allow people who like decorating and having a flexible house their way also. Enforcing the 1 house per account rule would also make EA a nice chunk of change because most people would want a warehouse and a flexible house.

so they should give you 306 total house tiles to work with. that would allow seven 7x7's.. or 1x 18x18 doesn't seem like a bad idea. they can assign the 306 value to castle, keep, and tower and assign appropriate (lower) values to the rest of the classic houses.

just an idea, the land would probably fill up with a lot of small houses. but at the same time people may be more inclined to have a second account (but less inclined to have a 3rd, 4th etc although i think people are already adverse to having 3+ accounts anyway)

Sorry, but I hate the idea. If you don't play a shard regularly, you shouldn't have the ability to clog up the housing availability for full time players to that server...la

Click to expand...

With the recent decline of players the housing crunch of years ago has passed... so I don't think there would be instant clogging of free land...

Also, not wanting to drop your house on your main shard is a reason some people don't try other shards... Although it is nice to be able to place on the shard you regularly play, you may be torn between two shards and don't know which one to call home... so you play six hours equally on both shards then you technically play both shards regularly

Since there is more open space now... I agree that the minimum should be raised to at least 2 houses per account.

If you arent planning on living on multiple shards, then a bank and inn are a fine combination. If you have two accounts it is easy to make 7 characters on each acct on the shard you "cruise" sometimes and give yourself plenty of storage space there.

One house per account is fine. What needs changed is item limit restrictions. Quite a few people just want big houses for the storage. What if a new house type called "warehouse" was created. This house type would allow for unlimited storage, but would be a plain looking building about the size of a villa. It could not be customized nor used for merchants. For item counts over a castle's, a rent fee would be incurred every month.

This would allow the pack rats to have what they want and allow people who like decorating and having a flexible house their way also. Enforcing the 1 house per account rule would also make EA a nice chunk of change because most people would want a warehouse and a flexible house.

Just a thought....

Click to expand...

we are talking about 2 totally different things.
you are talking about storage size and pack ratting.
im talking about being able to be functional on another shard.
i could care less about storage space.
if you cant get all your worldlly items into a keep or a 18x18 then you have too much stuff.
what i recomended was a house with one or 2 chests storage so you can make a mule on a different shard and share supplies with all your guys without having to drop it on the floor at a remote bank and log off and run back with another toon and hope it is still there.

I looked at many threads and I'm baffled to realise that none of the devs seem to even read the boards... it's like in the days where they were so busy to fix the lag that they couldn't do anything. Exept now everyone knows the millions are made and the game well paid for...

The service from my perception on many of you guys threads makes me realise the customer service here is worse than on free emulated shards, which is very, very sad.

Did anyone ever try to reason with them ? How can the owners of a dynamic game not even care for the simple suggestions of their players that do not really affect gameplay, even enhance it ?

If I was making such a salary and didn't care, I would not feel good with myself, at all !

Stratics is the oldest continually running MMORPG Fansite on the Internet. Founded in 1997 Stratics has served the Ultima Online Community for 18 years. We strive to provide the most complete social experience for Ultima Online players.